There were so many needs for us to continue to work for freedom, because I didn’t think that we should have to be treated in the way we were, just for the sake of white supremacy, because it was designed to make them feel superior, and us feel inferior. That was the whole plan of racially enforced segregation.

Part of what separates us from the other creatures on earth is that we make up stories. We are storytellers. And we can tell bad stories and we can tell good stories. We can tell stories that lead to division and hate and war. Or we can tell stories that lead to cooperation and peace and progress.

I was forced to think very hard about what it meant to be me, what it means to be a person who is only a brain. Pascal's 'thinking reed' really does capture it, because I'm just a bunch of dead muscles thinking.

How people need the possibility of sharing, of not being alone. It’s bad to be poor, but it’s difficult to be alone.

I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is like in high school I was reading a bunch of Ayn Rand, like objectivist, all super black and white, basically like f the poor, people should work harder, they should try harder. And now as a 30-year-old I’m basically like all about trying to help the poor or trying to help the planet in different ways. Trying to make the world a better place. It’s like a full 180 from the black and white that I was into in high school.

I’ve always wished I had stronger fingers, and most of my friends always have stronger fingers.

Yeah. I, I think an interesting thing with that is that like, is it even failure if you've learned from it and you've taken those lessons onto your next project or the next thing that you're working on? And it's like, that's not necessarily a failure. It's all just part of a long-term learning process.

I pretty much always just get up and have like a big breakfast and then go climbing. That’s kind of the standard.

I think I’m most proud of the speed record on Moonlight, because I broke a team record by myself by climbing it in a different style. It feels more “new” to me than simply climbing a route a little quicker, which is what all my other speed records are.

I think when I was younger, I had a lot of the fears that, that you expect from people. Like I was kind of afraid of spiders and things like that. And I think with, you know, years of dealing with fear nonstop, they've all sort of fallen away. I, I mean, I guess my greatest fear is like public embarrassment or public performance, or like what I said earlier about opera singing I'm like, that is still for sure that would be a nightmare. And like, yeah, I could do it. But I would be so bummed.